Yesterday, I saw a kickboxing/karate MMA school that was next to an Aikido school. Just a few miles up the road was a Taekwondo school, also next to a local gym that offered various martial arts programs. And I know also that, not too far away, were two more martial arts schools.

I checked the other suburbs in my city, and it seems that there are half a dozen schools in every suburb, all offering programs in training, fitness, self defence, and so on.

With our economy the way it is, I think the boom in MA schools will become a bust. IOW, quite a few schools will shut down.

I dont know, where i am again, we werent affected by the economic crisis at all (was confirmed on the yearly financial reports on the news). But we do have a serious lack of MA/Fighting art schools here, but the ones that are here, are of good quality if i have to say so myself.

I do however see more potential for business in this country regarding various martial arts, since everyone doesnt like the same style.

Maybe.....kinda depends on just how good the people running them are at business.

When the economy gets rough just being good at martial arts isn't going to be good enough.

Like all hobbies (from the students standpoint) MA has a pretty "soft" base.....people need time, "extra" ie disposible income,transport, etc and can easily be sidetracked for many reasons.

Many schools also depend on children as the prime income source. And kids have a huge "churn" rate even among MA students which have a huge "churn" rate as far as customers go anyway.So schools with a high child to adult ratio are going to feel it.

There are always exceptions of course.

Best hedge is a good business model and a owner that knows how to do business.

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I did battle with ignorance today.......and ignorance won.
Huey.

Possibly, but I don't think so. If a school is having trouble getting students it usually has more to do with the business model than the quantity of options.

Most schools are run by Martial Artists, not business people. Which is usually good for the Martial Arts, but not so good for the business. In General anyway.

I know of schools here that because they offer what is hot, and have the reputation. Get away with bad location and bad marketing/sales. What they don't realize is when the winds change, their enrollment will drop, unless they change or anticipate.

For now though, students (myself included) drive past several other schools to get to their bad location, while these other schools are fighting to keep the lights on.

Meanwhile, down the road a bit the other way is a school that is run by a business person. They have people knocking down their doors, sometimes 3 to a bag in some classes. The product is "OK" but their marketing and sales is excellent. Many of those students would probably do better and save money at the schools that are struggling, but those owners don't know how to market themselves to draw them in.

This is during not so great economic times, which is what I am sure the low enrollment schools believe is the issue, when really that's only a small part of the problem.

So, to the point I think it's more likely that some schools did well because there were so few options, they got students by default (this is not reflective of their quality BTW). Today, if you want to be successful, you have to either appeal to a wider base (whats hot in the mainstream) or market you specialty. That has way more impact then the number of shingles hanging on storefronts along the way.

Kimo, you're right, but that does not mean there's not an oversupply, especially in these economic times.

Honestly, I don't know what the saturation point for MA schools is and if we are/are not at that point. That would require a market analysis. It's a complicated model though because there are different target markets, Kids, fitness/weight loss/MMA (modern)/traditional. Plenty of different factors.

But oversupply is not really the way to look at it because this is a disposable income item, meaning availability is far less important that marketing. I give you Starbucks as my example, did the world really need a 3 dollar cup of of coffee? Coffee was almost as easy to get as water, still is for that matter.

So are there too many Martial Arts schools? More variety is better for the consumer usually so in that sense no. Is there an oversupply for the available student base? Possibly, as everything has a saturation point (only so many mouths to drink the coffee), but in general I would say,if you can sell it, they will come.

On another note, the economy hurts, but usually by a percentage. Business may be off 20%, doesn't mean you close your doors, good business models weather the storm.

I have no idea. But I would guess that it depends on what exactly you are counting as "supple" and "demand."

Have to make some assumptions here.

I used to travel a lot for work and could almost always find a TKD school no matter where I went.Traditional karate was noticably more rare. However people teaching varients or their own personal approachs were more easily found but still fewer than TKD.

If I were looking for say Okinawan Goju, depending on exactly where somebody was the "supply" would either be "not enough" or maybe "many choices."Same if I were looking for Tang-soo-do or Hwarang-do instead of TKD.Or koryu jujutsu instead of judo and judo period in many places.

If you dump ALL arts into one big bag labled "martial arts" then I suppose that you could argue that supply exceeds demand.....maybe......since you could also argue that the exsistance of so many schools could tend to indcate that saturation has yet to be reaached.

If you treat seperate arts as offering different things then "demand" and "supply" questions need to focused on those specific things.....whatever they might be.

In terms of the question you could probably, generally, say that people have more GENERAL access to "martial arts" but fewer actual/real choices than the overall numbers of schools might indicate.

Edited by cxt (08/07/1003:51 PM)

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I did battle with ignorance today.......and ignorance won.
Huey.

It probably depends on the art -- it's easy to find a karate or aikido studio in most areas, but other Japanese traditional arts are still in a position where prospective students are often faced with long commutes or making a move to a city where they can train.

As the economists would say, substitutability isn't perfect, but there's still some substitutability. IOW, while the various styles offer different programs, they still compete with each other to some extent, so, together, they may have created an oversupply.

Depends on their business model, whom exactly their customer base is, and whom they are aiming for.

Buddy of mine ran a "hard core" club--age 18-35 avg, hard contact, plenty of sparring, really hard workouts. Another club on the other side of town was a "family" place, lots of kids with their parents, short classes, not much sparring and it was heavily padded, classes were not all that tough from an objective POV.

And they both were the same style.

I would agree that "martial arts" in general, might, just might be in oversupply---depending on where you are located.

But a good business owner understand market differenation and how to use it.

Of course that presumes a "good" business owner

Edited by cxt (08/15/1002:35 PM)

_________________________
I did battle with ignorance today.......and ignorance won.
Huey.